Publication Type

PhD Dissertation

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

10-2025

Abstract

This study questions how large-scale ethical transgressions persist within organisations by focusing on the pivotal yet underexamined role of middle managers. Positioned between senior leadership and frontline employees, middle managers often determine the trajectory of reported misconduct. By analysing their responses to ethical concerns raised by subordinates, the study seeks to illuminate the processes that sustain or interrupt organisational inaction.

Using grounded theory methodology, in-depth interviews were conducted with middle managers across diverse sectors. The analysis yields a typology of five distinct handling strategies: creative compliance, face-saving resolution, informal influence, formal escalation, and strategic withdrawal. These are categorised into imaginative and conventional modes of resolution, reflecting divergent approaches to managing ethical challenges within complex organisational environments.

Analysis indicate that the choice and deployment of these strategies is shaped by the perceived severity of the transgression, the manager’s sense of power and influence, and the prevailing organisational structure. These contextual factors interact to enable or constrain certain actions, positioning middle managers as embedded actors navigating both organisational dynamics and personal moral commitments.

Middle managers’ narratives reveal that effectiveness of these handling strategies was construed from multiple perspectives, including those of the transgressor, the victim and the organisation and not solely on whether ethical transgressions were terminated. Each strategy manifested distinct forms of effectiveness shaped by organisational norms, power dynamics and the nature of the transgression. Strategies often operate within ambiguous spaces, balancing competing ethical and organisational considerations. When strategies depend on procedural engagement, it is contingent upon legitimacy and institutional support. The findings extend existing models of ethical action by demonstrating that resolutions deemed organisationally effective may be ethically deficient. Effectiveness is thus, reconceptualised as a multidimensional, context-dependent construct encompassing moral judgment, political negotiation, and adaptive decision-making.

Moreover, the study illustrates that routine managerial responses, while well intentioned can cumulatively reinforce an organisational façade of ethicality, allowing systemic transgressions to persist. This process is theorised through the lens of bounded ethical agency, which conceptualises middle managers as situated decision-makers whose ethical awareness and actions are shaped by institutional constrains. This grounded theory offers a nuanced account of how middle managers’ practice of ethical navigation can over time, contribute to the endurance of systemic ethical failure within organisations.

Keywords

Ethical transgressions, middle managers, handling strategies, grounded theory

Degree Awarded

PhD in Business (General Management)

Discipline

Organizational Behavior and Theory

Supervisor(s)

VADERA, Abhijeet Kartikeya

First Page

1

Last Page

157

Publisher

Singapore Management University

City or Country

Singapore

Copyright Owner and License

Author

Download

Share

COinS